Jesus often spoke in parables. He compared himself to
bread on several occasions. This is a parable about food
and families.
Once upon a time, in a country far away, there was a
happy peaceful people whose lives never seemed to change.
Generation after generation grew up with the sons
working in the fields with their fathers and the daughters
working in and around the home with their mothers. The
highlight of the day was the family meal, where everyone
gathered to enjoy the fruits of their labor and each-
other's company.
Being a very community-minded people, it was also their
custom to gather together at churches and clubs for large
potluck meals to share food and conversation with friends.
Then one day a doctor, a lawyer, and a politician met to
discuss the injustices and inequalities in their community.
They noted that some communities were more affluent than
others, and consequently had more lavish banquets. They
further noted that some families were poor, and their
children undernourished. Children who grew up in poor families
tended to be at a disadvantage, due to stunted growth and
capacity. They proposed that to even things out, a collection
be taken up for the poor and a feeding institution established
for the children so that all the young in the community
could have at least one good meal a day. A dietician would
be appointed to supervise the preparation and serving of this
meal. A feeding hall would be built in the center of town
for this purpose.
All thought that this was a good idea, and soon the feeding
hall for the young was an institution in every town.
It was noted, however, that one good meal a day was not enough
for a child to grow on, so the public feeding institutions grew
to provide three meals a day for each child. It was further noted
that besides good nutritious food, rest and exercise were
important for good health. Rest and exercise periods for the
children were added between the meals, and the appropriate experts
were hired to run the exercise programs.
The lack of children around the home was not noticed at first
because at this same time their country switched from an agrarian
economy to an industrial economy, and children were not needed,
or allowed, to work in the factories. Since the meal preparation
and childcare burden had been greatly reduced on mothers, they went
to work in the factories also. Society was progressing wonderfully.
However, there were some signs of trouble. Hundreds, sometimes thousands
of children were put together in the feeding halls for the sake of
efficiency. This made for unsanitary conditions and the easy spreading of
disease. Furthermore, all children were prescribed the same diet,
and those with diabetes and other individual needs suffered greatly.
Many communities found the tax burden of the feeding halls, dieticians,
exercise specialists, and their administrators to be burdensome, so
to cut costs many feeding halls cut out vegetables from their diet.
Children's growth began to be stunted due to lack of vitamins. Parents
who cared about their children would try to move to a community where
vegetables were served in the feeding halls. There began to be great
inequality throughout the land due to the differences between feeding halls.
Those that could afford the high cost sent their children to private
feeding halls.
There began to be complaints that bread had enormous religious
significance to many people in the land, so grain-based foods were removed
from the diet at all government-run feeding halls.
Also, because parents spent most of their waking hours at the factory and
children spent most of their time at the feeding hall, or working on
their take-home snacks and exercises, families were weakened and
divorces and family strife more common and prevalent than before.
To compensate for this, one church instituted a program called
"family home feeding" where the whole family would gather together
for a good meal and conversation, similar to what they did in the old
days. Also, some churches had their youth meet together in the mornings to
eat food with grain, since the government could not allow bread, with its
religious overtones, to be served in the public feeding hall.
However, the disease due to unsanitary conditions and stunted growth
due to the regimented diet in the public feeding halls had become so
apparent that a cry went up from parents throughout the land. The
doctors, lawyers, and politicians met again to consider the matter.
They decreed that not only should every child in a community be fed
the same diet, but that a consistent diet should be mandated for children
in every community throughout the land, to remove the inequality due
to the variations in feeding halls. All children would be given vegetables,
and taxes would be raised accordingly. Furthermore, to compensate for
stunted growth due to lack of grain-based foods such as bread, steroids
were prescribed for all children. To reduce the disease due to crowding
and lack of sanitation, antibiotics were to be ground into the food and
given in equal amounts to all children.
This was too much for some parents. Antibiotics should be administered
by parents, when a real need arose, and good bread given instead of
steroids, they said. Parents tried to find feeding halls where the
steroids and antibiotics were not given in too large of doses, but they
had a hard time due to the community equalization program that made every
feeding hall about the same. Other parents debated and argued about the
vegetable content of the national diet, and whether maybe a little bread
should be allowed the children after all.
In desperation, one set of parents actually stopped sending their children
to the public feeding hall. The mother stayed home from the factory and
fed the children at home instead. Their neighbors tried to have them
arrested because the mother was not a licensed dietician, but it was found
that the laws of the land only stated that all children must be fed, not
necessarily by a licensed dietician. So the home feeding movement grew,
but the government insisted on yearly physical exams for all home-fed
children, to prove that they were not malnourished or weak. This only
served to embarrass the public feeding hall administrators, however,
because it was found that home-fed children were perfectly healthy. So it
was claimed that home-fed children were missing out on the sociality
of hundreds of children together at the feeding hall.
No one remembered that for most of their history, children ate and worked
and lived with their parents and that families had been strong and happy.
At this point, the record of this sad country ends. Archeologists are not
quite sure what became of it. Some say they migrated away looking
for a better life. Others say that they simply had less and less children
until they dwindled away. But all agree that there could not be a stranger
people than those who had deliberately weakened their health and their
families while in the midst of peace and prosperity.